‘The
Daughter of Time’
The
Daughter of Time
is a detective novel by the late Josephine Tey. Born Elizabeth Mackintosh,
she was also a well-known playwright. She used the pseudonym
Gordon Daviot and her most successful play was Richard of
Bordeaux. The Daughter of Time is undoubtedly the most popular
of her crime novels and deals with the controversy of King Richard III
in an innovative way. It has inspired Ricardians all over the world
and below are a few appreciations of the novel by members of the Society.
The
novel has also stood the test of time and was one of the books selected
for the BBC Radio 4 programme ‘A Good Read’ pm 8 January 2006. It had
been chosen by Sue McGregor and her fellow readers were Michael Berkeley,
the composer, and Kerry Shale, the American actor. All three enjoyed
the book with MacGregor and Shale convinced that Richard wasn’t a rotter
after all. Berkeley wasn’t quite convinced but felt it was possible
that Richard hadn’t killed the Princes after all.
From
Josephine Tewson
A friend of his brings several postcards of
historical faces, all connected with mysteries or plots. Inspector Grant
has always prided himself on being able to judge, from a face, the character
of the person, or at least the basic quality of being good or bad.
He is intrigued by one face especially: the
face, he decides of a good man, a worrier, a man with a conscience.
Then, on turning the portrait over, he finds
that the caption reads ‘Richard III’. The original wicked uncle who
killed the Princes in the Tower and as evil a person as you could get!
He then decides to investigate the case against
Richard, using modern police procedure and the book, from then on, is
one of the great and most enjoyable detective novels I have ever read.
The by-product of all this was to get me very
interested in the York/Lancaster period of history and eventually I
became a member of the Richard III Society.
So many thanks to Josephine Tey and, in case
you are wondering – ‘Truth is the Daughter of Time’.
From
Lesley Wynne-Davies
A friend at work told me about Josephine Tey’s
The Daughter of Time. ‘Read it,’ she said. ‘You’ll never be the same again.’ I read it.
I wasn’t. It taught me
the mother of all lessons.
The motif of the unhistoricity of history soon
emerges. There are some gorgeous iconoclastic moments
before we even get going on the story of Richard III. The haze of white veils is stripped away from Mary Queen of Scots,
who is seen as an essentially silly woman, and Richard I ‘rockets to
and fro about the earth like a badly made firework’.
Detective Inspector Grant was interested in
faces. Lying injured in hospital, he was given a copy
of a portrait of Richard III, and it fascinated him. It made the medical staff think of illness,
and the policemen think of a judge.
Matron thought it a face showing desperate unhappiness. Grant himself thought it made the Mona Lisa
look like a poster.
To get at the man inhabiting the face, Grant
read books and employed a researcher, stripping away the hearsay evidence
so hated by all true detectives and piecing together the results to
reach a Not Guilty verdict on all charges.
And all the time the message comes across: people rearrange history
for their own benefit.
The traducing of Richard to prop up the Tudor
throne was not an isolated piece of deception.
History with a purpose may be not only economical with the truth,
but also marvellously generous with the innuendos.
Things get distorted and the distortions become history.
The book has a word for it – Tonypandy.
In 1910, in Tonypandy in the Rhondda valley,
a body of London Metropolitan police were sent down to confront striking
miners, ‘armed with nothing more than their rolled-up mackintoshes’. Later ages said the government used troops to shoot at the miners
striking for their rights. Two
women in Wigtown were said to have been tied to stakes in the sea and
drowned for their faith – but had really been convicted of treason on
a civil charge and not executed at all, but reprieved on their own petition
by the Privy Council. ‘Very superior, first growth, dyed-in-the-wool
Tonypandy,’ said Grant’s researcher, when he heard of it.
People at the time know a story is not true,
but allow it to spread without contradiction, either out of inertia
or for their own ends.
We
can all think of Tonypandy Tales from our own day. The Daughter
of Time taught me to fight against Tonypandy, whenever and wherever
it is to be found.
From Jane Trump
The Daughter of Time
- Some Reflections
Unlike with many Ricardians, The Daughter of Time did
not introduce me to Richard III. Another
fiction book, in the Shakespearean tradition, enthralled me with the
wicked but fascinating nobleman who engineered his way to the throne
of England. What The Daughter
of Time did for me was to open my eyes to the historical Richard
and to the debate raging around him.
Josephine Tey cemented my interest and my aim to find the truth.
Tey understands the attraction Richard has for
Ricardians. Inspector Grant's
observations about the famous portrait ring so true. The nervous, apprehensive
look, the playing with the rings, depicting a man uncertain and tortured
by… what? We don't know. However,
the portrait certainly does not depict a man of Richard's reputation,
an evil man who would murder his own kin to obtain ultimate power. We
are intrigued as to the kind of man he is and what lies behind the expression.
Through The
Daughter of Time we learn the complexities of Ricardian research
and are introduced to the main characters, those we love to hate, like
John Morton and those we distrust, like Henry Stafford. The calm and
barrenness of the hospital room provide stark contrast to the fast-moving
and colourful political events of 1483 to 1485 and the shifting sands
of loyalty and yet somehow they empathise with Grant's objective analysis
of the historical situation. Tey is pro-Ricardian in sympathy and yet
this is as a result of sound historical techniques, not a romantic notion.
Grant is open-minded at the beginning, merely curious to learn
more about this enigmatic man. It
is through his detective work that he finds a man condemned unfairly
by history through Tudor propaganda.
However, what I empathise most with in The Daughter of Time is Grant's reaction to learning that he is not
the first to defend Richard, that other historians from the Stuart period
onwards had been there first. His is a mixture of pleasure but disappointment
that he was not a pioneer. That
is exactly how I felt when, after reading this book, I embarked on my
crusade for Richard. I was convinced
that I was a lone campaigner. To discover the Richard III Society, with
its many members, gave me, like Grant, very mixed feelings.
Delight at finding like-minded people but a certain irrational
disappointment that I was not one of a 'select few' in the know!